The telnet protocol in actionscript

This was both rewarding, frustrating and ultimately a lesson in when to do one design over the other.

My initial thought was something along the lines of;

1. Flex(actionscript) is heavily geared to be an event based system.
2. A telnet protocol incorporating all events would be cool
3. Hey I'll write an event based telnet socket!

It works, don't take me wrong, it works.... but it also generates an awesome amount of events. Espacially when one considers that to be a true telnet client that you have to operate in a char by char model. i.e. every single character that traveled across this pipe was generating an event to end up rendering the display.

Combined with the single threaded nature of flash and we got ourselves an interface that felt a lot more slow then it needed to be.

Creating a MUD client

Recently I decided to take on a side project. Something to do outside of the business realm that would keep me mentally occupied at home. As an old school adventure player. I thought a good start would be to create a telnet application to play MUD(MU*) games.

This process, which has been going on for several months now has been a fascinating learning experience. To the point that I felt it appropriate to start recording the useful bits of information I had found out so that those who may come after me are assisted in their endeavors.

The technology I decided was to use Adobe Flex/AIR